Carbon Black, presented by Native Voices at the Autry, opens Nov. 7; plays Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; Sat. & Sun., 2 pm; through Nov. 22. Tickets: $10-$20. Autry National Center in Griffith Park (across from LA Zoo), Los Angeles; 323.667.2000, ext 354 or TicketWeb, 866.468.3399 or online at ticketweb.com

No news is good news. For the world in which we live, no news seems quite impossible. Not only is there a constant bombardment of headlines, the news is so sensationalized it’s hard not to get caught up in the frenzy. This spectacle of media was a huge influence on playwright Terry Gomez for her play Carbon Black, having its world premiere by Native Voices at the Autry.

Terry Gomez

“I am a single mother,” explains Gomez, “and about six years ago my daughter went out with a group of friends to a club and one of the girls was murdered.”  The incident kept “racing in my head and it affected my parenting.” To add to this, a little boy from her neighborhood was abducted. “It was such a surreal experience and again affected my parenting,” she admits.

Thus the core of the story is a mother’s relationship to her adolescent son. What is especially powerful for Gomez is “the worry parents have about their children.” Those were the catalysts along with the media coverage and fear following the 9/11 attacks. “If you’re not careful,” she warns, “you can really become crazy if you listen to everything.”

For the agoraphobic mother Sylvie, that’s exactly what she did. “Someone like Sylvie, she’s trapped inside the house and she has [the news] on like it’s a companion.”

So is Gomez most like Sylvie? “There’s a little bit of me in all of them,” she laughs. “I’d like to think I can be rational like the counselor, Ms. Yellowtree. I think that’s my rationality coming in and telling me to be calm. The worry I have about my children, I’m definitely in there with Sylvie. I could easily become her if I let my imagination take over. When your kids don’t come home, you imagine all kinds of things in panic.”

She says the son Inky is partially based on her son and the conversations they have. “My son is very smart and sees humor in everything. That’s where Inky’s strange sense of humor comes from.” Sylvie’s agoraphobia stems from a horrific attack that almost killed her. Only her young son has helped her. “He loves her very much but at the same time he’s growing up and needs to be around other people. She won’t let him and that’s causing problems for him.”

Gomez grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. “In the Native communities, storytelling is in our background. My family did that. We would gather at one of our grandmothers’ houses and the adults would tell stories of our family history, people in the community; funny stories about people.” Growing up in that environment, Gomez always knew she wanted to be a writer.

However, it almost didn’t become a reality. When Gomez was 17 she went to a special program for Natives in Boulder, Colorado, which turned out disappointing. “I handed in my story. Then they called me into the principal’s office.” Thinking they were going to congratulate her on a great story, she went in. “They asked, ‘Where did you copy this story from?’ I replied, ‘I didn’t; this is about my grandmother.’ I wrote specifically about the land we grew up on. I wrote specifically about her as a person, it was very detailed. The Native TA said, ‘You’re lying, I’ve read this before.’ It really freaked me out. I had no idea what to do so I dropped out. I was really disheartened.”

Later on in life, she decided to give it one more chance. “I took a playwriting class and we had to write a monologue and read it in class. After the class, I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. My teacher said, ‘Take that out of the trash and finish that play!’” So she finished it and had a reading at the Public Theatre; later, the play was published.

“If you really want to do it - persevere!” she advises. “I had so many people tell me over the years I couldn’t do it, I shouldn’t do it. I should only talk about certain things. But I did it anyway. I know when something is a good story.” She adds with insistence, “Persevere and be patient. If I had listened to all the nay-sayers, I would have given up a long time ago.”

Sheila Tousey (Menominee, Stockbridge Munsee) as Sylvia Black and Tonantzin Carmelo (Tongva, Kumeyaay) as Lisa Yellowtree

Although this play isn’t about race, Gomez writes with it in the subtext. “I write my characters from the point of view of a Native woman, there’s no way I couldn’t.” The character of Ms. Yellowtree is the only character written specifically as a Native person. “We are in every aspect of society and in the work force but we’re still not seen that way,” stresses Gomez. “Either we’re invisible or seen as a stereotype. Ms. Yellowtree… she’s a competent parent, a competent employee, very compassionate and she’s living right here, right now. She’s very much in society.”

Humor also plays an invaluable role in the story. “Native people in general use a lot of humor to talk about our condition. We’ve had a very traumatic history,” she admits. “I tried to bring [humor] out in my characters. There needs to be something to lighten it.”

That’s how the character of Mr. Tucker evolved. “Mr. Tucker is an amalgamation of all the bosses I’ve ever had that treated me in a demeaning way. That’s how he treats Ms. Yellowtree. I’m short and my male bosses would treat me like a little girl, speaking down to me.” Mr. Tucker has a handicap, which possibly has given him cause to take kindness for granted. In turn, there’s ridiculousness to him. “You can’t take him seriously.”

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Carbon Black is its message. “There’s so much violence towards women and children,” expresses Gomez. “In 2007, the Amnesty International Report said Native American women are most likely to be sexually attacked and assaulted and murdered. We have a long history of that here in America. I think there is still a tendency to see Native Americans as less than. And women are seen as less than. There’s so much violation of women and children and it needs to be stopped. I’m hoping someone will get up and say stop it, and take some kind of action in their community.”

And to think, she almost didn’t become a writer.

Randy Reinholz

Gomez left the play “in good hands” with director and Native Voices Founder/Producing Artistic Director Randy Reinholz. “I wanted to work with Terry [Gomez] and it’s been really lovely working with her,” admits Reinholz. “She’s been tenacious about the work and she’s focused and clear about what she wants with the show. It’s just been a joy. It’s a sharp story. Her story telling method really moves quickly.”

Reinholz likes the tension and suspense of psychological drama, and watching how people interact. “When that works best,” he says, “there’s humor that disarms the audience so there’s a sense of playing with or enjoying the characters so we really are surprised when we see the depth of the problem. When you get hit with the reality of the situation, it’s really terrifying and frightening.”

Reinholz, like Gomez, points out this is not a show about being a Native American. “In some ways the hero [Ms. Yellowtree] is Indian but it’s coincidental. The audiences we’ve read for have really appreciated that. She’s a professional Native in the world who is making her way and is succeeding.”

Native Voices has been nurturing and training Native playwrights and artists for over 10 years. It started out with play reading series back in 1994 and eventually moved to full productions at the Autry. “It’s a fantastic artistic home,” says Reinholz. “It’s also full of irony,” he chuckles. “The writers have moved on to other venues and the actors are booking more work.” He adds, “It’s exciting to see the artists grow.” More importantly, it’s exciting “to see Native artists as stars and as multi-dimensional characters.”

The apartment Sylvie and her son Inky live in takes precedence on the stage. “What we were trying to communicate with that apartment is a sense of claustrophobia,” expresses Reinholz. The living room with a television is where most of the action takes place. “The television plays a large role in this play with bringing in information; particularly, bringing in fear. There’s this one exit out of this room to the rest of the apartment but you feel like the rest of the apartment is really separate and dark.

“The other exit is the front door, with the boogey man on the other side,” he continues. “But the adolescent boy has been navigating the boogey man quite successfully and wanting to know what’s on the outside. So the set draws you in to those questions. There’s a lot of attention to the front door and we can play the front door on both sides. We really have a great place to sit down and play scenes there. At some really intense moments the lighting can make the place almost come alive and have a heart beat.”

Reinholz talks of the role of the media: “I think this play is very much a product of the Bush Administration. Politicians were using the media to create wild, sensational fear to scare people into inaction. But much of the actual horror that was going on was not reported at all. I think this play is a reaction to that. There’s so much sensationalism and scaring the general public. The woman with the agoraphobia is absolutely manipulated by that media. The boy was manipulated because he had a serious trauma - his mother was beaten. Now he can navigate and find some sense of the life beyond the claustrophobia of the walls and wonders if there is some way he can get his mother to that point.

“Life is not simple, it’s not pretty - it is difficult. But the constant reporting of the sensational and how it is horrible isn’t really going to spur people into action to make the world better. That’s the character of electronic media in the play.”

On the humor in the play, Reinholz speaks of Mr. Tucker: “He was put in there to be the bad guy in the earlier drafts. But as it came along, sensationalism really is the bad guy and the boogey man. Tucker became this wonderful comic character. He says a lot of wild things. He’s trying to make a difference but he’s at a point in his life where he’s completely ignored. If he doesn’t behave outlandishly, nothing’s going to change. He’s disabled and we’re still playing with that. Often people see the disability and that’s the person first. And that’s another way prejudice works. I think it’s because the world is busy and it’s easier to deal in short hand.”

Carmelo and Tousey

Reinholz is excited to be working with this cast. “It’s a really smart, thoughtful group of people who also are wonderful actors. It’s the reason you start doing theatre. You want to work on these kinds of projects with these kinds of people. It’s just a joy to be with them. It’s all about the work.”

He’s most impressed with Michael Drummand who is 14 years old and playing the 13 year old Inky. “He’s at that perfect age,” says Reinholz. “He’s so intuitive and he asks these great questions. Sometimes he’s a child and sometimes he’s like a grown up. And you’re never sure which moment he’s going to pick up one moment to another.”

Sheila Tousey, one of Sam Shepard’s favorite actors, plays the mother Sylvie. “She really is that kind of soulful, deep, laughing and sensual… real woman,” expounds Reinholz. “She’s just this soulful actress I really am crazy about.”

Like Gomez, Reinholz hopes audiences take the message of the play to heart. “I’m hoping one of the reasons people will see this play is to help them reconnect with their own intimate relationships.” That people look at “places that might need healing that have been damaged by some outside force and realize there’s a way to address that. You don’t’ have to be imprisoned by these things that have happened to you or by things bad people do in the world. You can take action.”

We can ignore violence, let it paralyze us with fear, or we can do something about it. If you want “no news is good news” to become a reality, I suggest doing the latter.

Article by Ashley Steed

Feature image of Michael Drummond and Sheila Tousey  and all photos by Tony Dontscheff Photography